


Everything That Remains and is Kept Inside

by chucksauce



Series: Spoilersauce's Follower-Love [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Vulnerable Bucky, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 22:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8304065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucksauce/pseuds/chucksauce
Summary: Bucky wished he could say the nightmares were the worst of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bohemienne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/gifts).



> This drabble is for the super-lovely [Bohemienne](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne), one of the winners of the mini-raffle I held recently when I hit a follower milestone on [my fic rec blog](http://spoilersauce.tumblr.com). She requested H/C Stucky, either in the WW2 or post-CA:CW.
> 
> Bohemienne, your writing is absolutely gorgeous, and has set the bar for what I want to do with my own. I hope this suffices. *Toes the dirt*

_“Like the imprint of our bodies,_

_Not a sign will remain that we were here._

_The world closes behind us,_

_The sand is smoothed out again.”_

\--Yehuda Amichai, from **_Summer, or Its End_ **

  
  


Bucky wished he could say the nightmares were the worst of it.

Steve, the beacon at his side, the pied piper leading four hundred goddamn soldiers back to Allied camp, had been the only reason he’d been able to push forward. By the time they got back, by the time he saw the awe Steve garnered with his bull-headed mission, he was ready to fall, ready to sink into himself for a thousand years.

The medics had sprung into action without hesitation, attending to the worst of the POWs. Bucky had been pushed to the bottom of the list. There were too many soldiers and not nearly enough doctors.

  
  


The worst of it caught up with him that night. No one questioned the way Steve, this near-unrecognizable man, had guided him gingerly back to his tent.

Neither of them spoke--what was there to say?

  
  


_Faceless men, doctors with cruel fingers and dull tools prying everything from him. The darkness that swallowed him before the blinding yellow-white of flood-light bathed him, left him as defenseless as the hard leather straps shackling him too-tight to the metal table. It cut his eidolon captors out of view, bathed them in pitch. Grit and blood, the stink of cold sweat and fear. Barely-audible cries echoing across the vast spaces from the detention cages beyond._

_Lancing pain that excoriated each nerve. No escape._

Bucky woke, a spasm jerking him free from the half-remembered nightmare, his own strangled protest the only sound above the rustle of camp, Steve’s steady breath across the meager tent.

His breath caught in his chest. Pain raced in his veins, fire and ice and acid-adrenaline, and when his breath finally escaped, it tore from him in a voiceless whimper.

“Buck?” Steve’s voice was soft, nearly lost to the roar in Bucky’s head. “Bucky, you’re here with me. You’re safe.”

Steve pushed up from his pallet, scooted across the frozen, bare earth-floor until he lay just at the edge of Bucky’s bedroll. He didn’t speak, didn’t reach out. Bucky wasn’t sure if he was glad for it or not--even the softest touch might have been enough to exacerbate the torture in his bones.

“Steve,” he choked out. Distantly, he remembered nights in Brooklyn. Two years ago, twenty, it didn’t matter. Steve’s wheezing breath in the night, the sure knowledge that any winter might be his last.

But this Steve, strong and whole, was afraid to so much as touch him for fear he might shatter. It settled heavy in his chest, constricting his lungs the way he was sure asthma had done to Steve, back in Brooklyn.

“Shhh,” Steve murmured, and only then did Bucky realize his face was wet, his eyes burned.

“There’s no coming back from this, is there?” Bucky finally whispered. “Ain’t a way to undo this.”

Steve shook his head. He lifted a hand--so large, near-alien were it not for the sharp line of his wrist, the deft artist’s fingers--to comfort Bucky, but thought better of it.

That had been their whole life, hadn’t it? Aborted comfort, a thousand points of contact over the years lost to better judgement.

Did it really matter now?

Bucky rolled over onto his side, shuttered eyes blinking away the worst of the tears. He lifted his hand, caught Steve’s before it was fully withdrawn.

Steve’s sharp intake of breath settled into a heavy sag. His voice came out in a whisper. “Come here.”

Steve pulled Bucky close, hand pressed to the small of his back to steady him before sliding up to brush through Bucky’s slick, unwashed hair. His touch was deliberate, firm.

“Breathe with me,” Steve murmured. “In on one, out on two.”

Bucky forced aside everything in order to lose himself to Steve’s comforting touch, the sound of a voice so familiar it could have been his own.

The pain didn’t cease, didn’t ease off. Maybe it never would. But Steve’s warmth, his weight, was enough to bring Bucky back from death, to keep the worst of his thoughts at bay.

When he fell asleep again, it was dreamless, save for the liminal space between consciousness and oblivion, where Steve held him. It would have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to decide whether or not to continue this one. I kind of dig leaving it as-is... but if it gets enough love, I might be prevailed upon. What do you think?


End file.
